The Witch Hunter Read online

  He listened gravely while she made an impassioned condemnation of the wave of hatred that was sweeping the city against her kind – and the injustice of the hysterical mob violence that had been drummed up by Gilbert de Bosco and those whom he had influenced.

  ‘Poor Theophania Lawrence has already paid the price, along with Elias Trempole – and Alice Ailward and Jolenta of Ide will undoubtedly soon be hanged. I fear for more of us poor souls, though I care little for myself. But I would warn you, Crowner, someone very close to you may also be at risk.’

  His scalp prickled at the slow but deliberate way in which the deep voice rolled out these portents of doom, especially when her last words could refer to no one else but Nesta.

  ‘What have you heard, Lucy?’ he snapped urgently. ‘Is there a threat to my woman in the Bush?’

  Her heavy lids lifted as she looked up at him, her sharp eyes intense within their reddened rims. ‘It is more what I feel in my old bones, sir, than what I have heard. We sisters often hear each other in our heads, without the need to shout. I knew what had happened at the very second Theophania died – and I know that the Welsh woman may also be betrayed.’

  De Wolfe chewed at his lip, intensely worried by her words. He felt the conviction of her belief, though he usually had little time for sooth-saying and fortune-telling.

  ‘Did you seek me out to tell me this?’

  The old woman shrugged. ‘In part, Crowner, for you have both been tolerant of me. But also, I beseech you to do what you can to stop this oppression. You are a just man and a powerful law officer. Surely there is something you can do to cool this madness?’

  John looked at the bizarre face, and saw a strength of character that fleetingly, was almost regal as the old woman stared at him in hope. He only wished there was something he could say which could assuage her fears. ‘I have been greatly concerned myself at this misplaced crusade,’ he growled. ‘But you must understand that, regrettably, there is very little I can do. The mob responsible for Theophania’s killing melted away before they could be caught – and catching them would not bring her back now.’

  He gripped her arm, not shying away from the feel of a skeletal limb beneath the grimy cloth. ‘As to the others, I cannot yet fathom why Elias was murdered. And the other two women were brought before the bishop’s court, over which I have not the slightest influence – in fact, the very opposite, as many in the cathedral have little love for me.’

  Lucy nodded sadly, but persisted. ‘I believe you, sir. But those two women cannot be hanged by the Church. I hear they will be sent to the Shire Court for sentencing, so have you no power to see them shown some mercy there?’

  Again, de Wolfe had to shake his head. ‘I fear that the sheriff is strongly on the side of the crusaders in this matter, for his own personal reasons. He also detests me, and if I tried to intervene it would merely harden his attitude towards them, just to spite me.’ He rumbled in his throat, a sign of his emotions. ‘I have every sympathy with your feelings, lady – but would advise you to keep yourself well out of the public eye at the present time, as there are many who would gleefully see you sucked into this tragic situation. Your reputation as a cunning woman marks you out too well for attention and I am surprised that you have not been accosted already!’

  The hairy face stared at the ground as she leaned forward on her stick. ‘As I have said, I fear nothing for myself, but wish to do all I can to save those of my kind who will surely perish if this madness goes on. Is there nothing you can do, Crowner?’

  There was a grating sound behind him and, turning guiltily, he saw that his front door had opened. Thankfully, it was only Mary, who stood there, frowning at the pair in the lane.

  ‘I will do what little I can, Lucy,’ he said. ‘I have already spoken to the archdeacon, who is wholly against this campaign of his fellow-canon. But others there support it, along with the sheriff and some of the merchants. It was the death of one of the guildmasters which started all this, as his widow stirred up the trouble in the first place.’

  He moved away from the old woman and she bowed her head to him. ‘Thank you for listening, Crowner. It now seems that I will have to do what I can myself, though God knows it will be little enough.’

  De Wolfe stared at her in alarm. ‘You be careful, now. I have told you to keep well out of sight until this blows over. Thank you for your warning concerning my friend at the Bush – but it is yourself who is in most danger at the moment!’

  He nodded his head at her brusquely and loped away to his front step, where Mary was still standing with a disapproving look on her face.

  As the heavy oak door closed with a squeal from its leather hinges, Lucy stood for a moment staring at it. ‘Now I know what I must do,’ she muttered to herself. ‘And may God protect me – or at least receive me into his arms!’

  Later that morning, Lucy stumbled wearily up Fore Street, her arthritic joints protesting at the slope as she laboriously hauled herself along with the aid of her stick, which was almost as gnarled as herself. She had no need to jostle through the folk on the road or those who loitered around the shopfronts or the stalls. They stood aside and gave her forbidding appearance a wide berth, her lank grey locks falling in a tangle over the shoulders of her dirty cape and the red-rimmed eyes peering from the weird face with its profusion of coarse hair. She wore no cover-chief or head-rail, but a rag was tied around her forehead like a grubby coronet. Mothers pulled their children close to their skirts as she passed, especially as her mouth was set in a ferocious scowl.

  Lucy was in crusading mood, angry and mortified at the persecution of the other cunning women who were being set upon just because they had the gift of healing and sooth-saying – a gift that had been tacitly accepted and welcomed by the poorer people since time out of mind. She felt compelled to do what she could for them, whatever the cost to herself – though she was largely uncaring as to her own fate, often feeling that the sooner her own miserable existence was ended the better. She was old – she could not remember how old. She was poor to the point of destitution and lived in utter squalor, often hungry and usually in pain. Even her own few herbs and potions could no longer keep at bay the ache in her hips and knees and the torment from her bowed back-bone.

  Lucy had had a family once – even a husband half a lifetime ago, until he had been killed in the quarry where he toiled. That was before the hair had started to grow on her face, as her skin thickened and her eyes weeped. Almost destitute, she had eked out an existence – one could hardly call it a living – by selling her gifts of healing and the herbs she collected for half-pence. She squatted in the ramshackle hut on Exe Island, built from scraps with her own hands. Now she was tired and ready to go to God, in whom she believed fervently, in spite of her familiarity with the ancient wisdom. That was why it was so unfair, so evil that the other cunning women were being persecuted on the grounds that they were sacrilegious unbelievers and heretics, denying God, Christ and the Holy Spirit. In fact, they were all white witches, and blasphemous thoughts never crossed their minds.

  Lucy rolled all these matters around inside her head as she stumped up the last stretch of Fore Street and reached the central crossing of Carfoix, where High Street continued straight ahead and North and Southgate Streets dipped away down on either side. It had been a busy junction for most of the last thousand years and today was still as active, with ox-carts, horsemen, porters, pack-men and barrow-men all jostling with pedestrians and the flocks of sheep and goats being herded by farmers and slaughtermen to the nearby killing grounds of the Shambles.

  The old woman stopped near the corner to get her breath back, standing in front of a booth selling meat pasties, the other shoppers diverging around her like a mill-stream flowing around a post. The stall-holder stood frowning under his striped awning, waiting for the disreputable old hag to move away and stop scaring off his customers. When she failed to move on, he shouted rudely at her, but fell silent when she turned and fixed him with a stare
from her inflamed eyes.

  A few yards away, right on the corner of the crossing, a small empty cart stood idle, the shafts for the ox propped up while the carter took the beast away to water it. Lucy trudged across and with some difficulty, sat on the tailboard and with much grunting and panting, hoisted her legs up. Then she clawed her way to a standing position by grasping the side rails and moved to the front, where she found herself a couple of feet above the people thronging the junction of the roads. A few heads turned at this curious sight, but far more paid attention when the apparition began shouting in a voice than was surprisingly strong, coming from such a decrepit body.

  ‘Listen to me, people of Exeter! Listen to Lucy, who has helped many of you who were in trouble over the years … if you have any gratitude at all, listen to me now!’

  A score of people stopped what they were doing and turned to stare at this old hag, bellowing from the back of a cart. Customers at the booths stopped feeling in their purses and even the stall-holders stood gaping at this weird old woman. Most of them knew who she was, even though in recent years she had rarely left her muddy island.

  ‘What the hell is Lucy ranting about?’ called a pie-man to the fish-seller in the next booth.

  ‘God knows, the old witch is off her head,’ he replied sourly. ‘She should be locked up, along with those other two down in the cathedral.’

  The whiskered face under the ragged headband slowly scanned the upturned faces below her. ‘Shame on those who persecute those who cannot help themselves!’ she bellowed. ‘Why are so many of you turning against those whose only aim is to cure your ills, to solve your problems and to give you that help which you have sought from us for generations?’

  It was quickly apparent that the division of opinion in the city was equally present in the crowd around the crossing at Carfoix. Some looked sheepish, others sympathetic at her words, remembering how cunning women had helped them find lost possessions, bring back errant husbands and given succour to their infants with loose bowels or a croupy cough. But a sizeable number, especially those who had been harangued by their parish priests the previous Sunday, glared angrily across Carfoix, and a few shouted at her and shook their fists.

  Heated disputes began, both between the moderates and the sympathisers, but also among the more hawkish faction, who started to call for action against the hag.

  ‘Get down, you evil old woman!’ yelled a meat porter. ‘Clear off or you’ll go the same way as Theophania Lawrence!’

  Lucy ignored them all and continued to shout her defiance and pleas for understanding. ‘Why are you suddenly against us, when we have done nothing to harm you? We respect the Church and are good Christians, which is more than can be said for some of you intolerant murderers!’ She gripped the rough wood of the cart’s head-rail and shook herself against it in a paroxysm of emotion. ‘Do not persecute us so unjustly – we are the same people that you have lived alongside all your lives. Unscrupulous people are using you as a tool for their own purposes and you let yourself be led by the nose like sheep to the knife!’

  This really annoyed the more bellicose of her antagonists in the street. ‘You cheeky old bastard, keep a civil tongue in your head or we’ll cut it out for you!’ yelled a red-faced shopkeeper, who was a verger in St Pancras’s Church.

  Someone threw a rotten cabbage that he picked up from behind a booth. It missed Lucy but disintegrated against the side of the cart. As if this were a signal, the verbal battles between citizens flared into brawling and several men began slugging it out with others over their differing opinions on cunning women. Old ladies began screaming and young mothers hastily gathered their children to their skirts and tried to get out of the way of the scuffles that were breaking out across the street. From their lair behind the Guildhall just up the street, the two constables heard the uproar and hurried down to Carfoix, but two men armed with staves were ineffectual against the spreading mêlée that confronted them.

  The anti-witch faction were in the majority and more ambled out of the nearby alehouse, attracted by the noise, adding their drunken prejudices to the disputes that were raging. Osric, the lanky constable, rapidly summed up the situation and again wisely decided not to try to quell the developing riot, but to try to remove the cause.

  ‘Let’s get the old woman out of here, before they hang her too!’ he hissed to Theobald, who was more slow-witted than the Saxon.

  Together, they edged their way around the shouting, brawling throng to reach the ox-cart, where Lucy was still waving her arms and declaiming the innocence of her sisters and herself, though no one could now hear her above the tumult in the street. Osric reached the back of the cart without many in the crowd taking any notice of him and he rapped on the floorboards with his staff to get her attention. She turned at the noise, without breaking off her repetitive speech, but when she saw who it was she turned her back on him again.

  ‘Come on, woman!’ he called urgently. ‘Get yourself away from here or they’ll string you up, just as they did Theophania.’

  He reached out with his staff and ungallantly poked her in the back with its end. She turned again, looking uncertainly at him this time. ‘I have business to attend to, man. I care nothing for this rabble.’

  ‘You’ll do little business dangling at the end of a rope, so come on, damn you!’ he said desperately, as he saw some of the truculent crowd staring at them, some even breaking off their wrestling and shoving to see what was going on at the cart. Theobald had seen it too and he clambered up on to the wagon and grabbed the bearded hag by the arm. ‘Lucy, they’ll kill you if you stay here. Come away now, for pity’s sake!’

  The little tableau on the back of the dray and the sudden cessation of her strident voice began to attract attention and more faces were being turned towards them. ‘There’s the root of the trouble!’ yelled a florid-faced pie-man from Butcher Row, shaking his fist at Lucy.

  Others took up the cry and part of the crowd began moving towards the wagon, abandoning most of their scuffles with the other faction.

  ‘Pull the old fool off, Theobald!’ hissed Osric, fearful of a repetition of the awful event down in Bretayne. The other constable grabbed Lucy’s other arm and with some ripping of the rotten fabric of her cape pulled her protesting to the tailboard. Another missile, this time a small turnip, caught her on the side of the head and this decided Lucy that it was best to run and fight another day, if she could. She half fell from the cart, being caught by Osric, and with the two constables dragging her, she hobbled across to the mouth of High Street. Her two protectors shouldered their way through a gathering crowd whose hostility was increasing, and hands stretched out to try to grab her, as insults and curses were thrown at the old crone. One wild-eyed young woman, who seemed already to be in some sort of hysterical frenzy, screamed abuse at her and grabbed a handful of her hair, until Theobald roughly pushed her away.

  Barging their way forward, the constables forced a way through the main ring of protesters and hurried as best they could up the street, pulling the old woman by brute force, as her legs would not support her at that speed, especially as she had lost her stick.

  ‘This is the wrong way to get me home to Exe Island,’ she gasped. ‘Where are you taking me? To gaol?’

  Theobald shot a sideways glance at Osric. ‘Just where the hell are we going, anyway?’

  The other man had not really thought about it; all he had wanted to do was to get her off the cart and away from the angry crowd, who were now trailing after them, resentful at having their prey snatched away from them so abruptly.

  ‘What about our shack? Can we put her in there until we get help from the castle?’ suggested Theobald.

  ‘This mob would kick it to pieces in minutes, the mood they’re in now,’ grunted Osric, panting with the effort of half carrying the smelly old woman.

  ‘The crowner!’ she said suddenly. ‘Take me to the crowner’s house. He promised to help me.’

  Theobald began to protest at th
is liberty, but Osric, mindful of the angry mob almost on their heels, was in no mood to argue, especially as Martin’s Lane was now only a few yards away. As a few more old cabbages, turnips and a stone or two were hurled at their backs, together with a rising clamour of indignant abuse, he stumbled along with the other pair, pushing aside more curious onlookers in the main street, who were not yet aware of the cause of the disturbance.

  When they came to the narrow entrance to the lane, he dragged Lucy around to the right and dived down the alley towards the second tall, narrow house. As they reached the blackened oak door, the horde of witch-haters appeared in the throat of Martin’s Lane, but slowed down as they saw that the constables were beating on the door of Sir John de Wolfe. Most of the citizens of Exeter were somewhat in awe of the coroner, not only out of respect for his office and his reputation as a soldier, but because he was also a tall, grim authoritarian, who did not suffer foolish or impudent behaviour gladly and was likely to respond with a heavy cuff from his large fist.

  As they hesitated, the door was opened by Mary and before she could open her mouth Osric had bundled Lucy across the threshold into the vestibule. ‘Call the crowner. This old woman is in danger from that rabble!’ he snapped, then pulled the door shut and stood outside it alongside Theobald, their staves at the ready to defend the house.

  The crowd advanced cautiously, the red-faced verger and the pie-man in front, the rest pressing behind, uttering threats and recriminations against the evil women who, with the aid of Satan, rode broomsticks and roasted babies.

  ‘Get away from here, you’ll not repeat what happened at the Snail Tower,’ yelled Osric.

  ‘That was none of our doing, though it was well intentioned,’ retorted the pie-man, brandishing a large knife. There was no way of telling whether he had been with the lynch-mob down in Bretayne or whether this was a spontaneous demonstration, fanned into activity by the parish priests and possibly other agents of the witch-hunting canon.